Our Values

The NHS Constitution (March 2013) incorporated a set of values and required individual organisations to build upon and develop them locally. During 2014 we have worked together to develop a set of values and behaviours that everyone must subscribe to. These values are now finalised and were officially launched on 15 October.

How did we develop the values?

This work was started in January with a presentation at our Staff Engagement Event to introduce the idea of values and how they can support us as individuals, the organisation, and ultimately our patients. Workshops helped gather responses to four questions:

When you come to work what is important to you?

If you or your family were a patient what would be important to you?

When Southern Derbyshire commissions effectively what does it feel like for patients?

When Southern Derbyshire works best what does it feel like for staff?

The Staff Development Forum reviewed and themed the responses and we worked on attaching desired behaviours to the values. This has resulted in a final set of values and behaviours and they are now ready for roll out.

Each value is supported by a supporting statement to describe what it means and outlines how we will behave to make sure the value is embedded in our work.

What does this really mean?

On the face of it the values are just words, but every member of CCG staff must become familiar with them and challenge themselves to live the values through their day-to-day tasks.

The values are helpful to our decisions and outlook as an organisation. Everyone must embrace them to make them work for the benefit of our patients and business partners and follow the behaviours which we have linked to each value.

Every action taken by the CCG – every conversation, every letter, every decision, every policy and every procedure – must be able to demonstrate the behaviour fitting with the values.

And it is for every member of staff to constructively challenge any process or behaviour which they come across which isn’t aligned with our values.

What next?

The onus is on us all to bring the values to life in our areas of work and corporately we will be aligning some of our internal processes and way of working to our values. This will include amendments to our appraisals and objective-setting and ultimately our recruitment processes, but we must also live the values and bring them to life at directorate, team and individual level.